Future potato demand growth will mainly depend on potato consumption in China and India, the two huge rice-eating countries in Asia, said industrial analysts Monday in Kunming, capital of southwest China's Yunnan Province.

Signs have shown that people in the two countries have been diversifying their diets with more potatoes, said Hubert Zandstra, director general of the Peru-based International Potato Center (CIP) at the Fifth World Potato Congress (WPC) held in southwest China.

China is the second largest potato producer in the world and it's estimated that the potato consumption can grow by at least five percent in the following years since the government has been investing more in the domestic potato industry, Zandstra said.

The county's potato industry has been growing by leaps and bounds over the past ten years, faster than any other country in the world and the growth rate is more than that of the population, which means Chinese are eating more potatoes and nobody would neglect the huge market, said Fernando Ezeta, an agronomist with CIP.

In 2003, China planted over 4.7 million hectares of potatoes, a quarter of the world's total and the production topped 75 million tons, about one fifth of the world's total, CIP statistics show.

Though boasting huge production, China still lagged behind in developing new varieties and potato processing.

China could add input in developing new varieties more tolerant to diseases and droughts with better quality, Ezeta said.

About 60 percent of potatoes are processed in the United States, while in China, the figure is merely between five to ten percent, Ezeta said.

It's important for China to build a better processing system to avoid a market glut in harvest season and it's also an effective system to maintain sustainable development of the potato industry, Ezeta said.

The Fifth World Potato Congress will end Tuesday. The World Potato Congress is held every three years to promote potato technology and trade exchanges across the world.

(Xinhua News Agency March 29, 2004)